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Julie Gregory

Julie Gregory Biography

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“It seems he cannot get near me, with my deep well of sadness, with my myopic awareness of the pain of the past and the severity of our family's dysfunction, without drinking from the well himself. Ten years later and my father's caught up with me With my eyes holding steady the reflection of all that happened, he looks into them and cannot deny the pain. The gift of burden I carry as the family truth teller is a token he willingly takes from me now. Where once I saw his tears as coins to cleanse me, too much time has passed for me to have remained in that purgatory. Our family's poison held as a ruby in my throat for so long now, I see him cry, but it's me who is under glass. No longer with a child's heart, his tears fall on barren soul.”

“When I look in the fridge, I see groceries, but I don't see food. My stomach growls; but there is no appetite. Appetite and hunger are different. Appetite is the mental prompting that kicks the auto-response into drive so you actually reach out, take the food, put it in your mouth, chew, and swallow. I learned this in my first psychology course. Eating isn't just a physical need; it starts in the mind, generating hunger, which then should trigger the body to ingest food. I have no sparks between these plugs.”

“I start to see that I surround myself with broken people; more broken than me. Ah, yes, let me count your cracks. Let's see, one hundred, two... yes, you'll do nicely. A cracked companion makes me look more whole, gives me something outside myself to care for. When I'm with whole, healed people I feel my own cracks, the shatters, the insanities of dislocation in myself.”

“Having taken on the care of foster children, a mother forced her own daughter to beat them. According to her later account: Mom puts the fly swatter in my hand and shows me how to do it: grab their wrists, and whack the plastic handle over their pink baby palms. She stands in the doorway of their room until I can crack hard enough to make them scream.”